This paper focuses on the question of whether DNA patents help or hinder scientific discovery and innovation. While DNA patents create a wide variety of possible benefits and harms for science and technology, the evidence we have at this point in time supports the conclusion that they will probably promote rather than hamper scientific discovery and innovation. However, since DNA patenting is a relatively recent phenomena and the biotechnology industry is in its infancy, we should continue to gather evidence about (...) the effects of DNA patenting on scientific innovation and discovery as well the economic, social, and legal conditions relating to intellectual property in biotechnology. We should give the free market, the courts, researchers, and patent offices a chance to settle issues related to innovation and discovery, before we seek legislative remedies, since new laws proposed at this point would lack adequate foresight and could do more harm than good. However, we should be open to new laws or regulations on DNA patents if they are required to in order to deal with some of the biases and limitations of the free market. (shrink)

Two utilitarian defenses, traceable to Bentham and Mill, arecommonly offered for patents. It is contended that patents induce innovation, and thatpatents induce disclosure of innovation. Patents on some or all of the human genomepose particular challenges for these defenses. In the first instance, patents on nucleotidesequences entail the perverse notion of human reproduction qua infringement. In the second place, when such patents are available (as is presently the case), the two defenses involve a counterfactual claim, viz., that if there were (...) no such patents, biotechnological progress would wane. Even if these challenges are met, concerns about respect for humanity generate opposition to property interests in compounds manipulated outside the human body but significantly homologous to compounds found in humans. This stance about things human might appear to commit the fallacy of division. In a dialogue between a Kantian and a utilitarian, arguments for and against property interests in the human genome are presented. (shrink)